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Most
people driving along U.S. 71 from Austin
to Columbus don't spend any
time thinking about the highway bridges that afford them the ability to cross
streams and rivers without getting wet.
But making it from one side of
a river to the other used to be a significant undertaking in Texas, at least during
times of ample rainfall and the resulting heavy stream flow.
On a horse
he named Comanche, a Harvard-educated physician journeyed in the Republic of Texas
- and forded or floated across many of its significant streams -- in 1839.
Despite his training in New England, Dr. Frederic B. Page seemed to have spent
more time people-watching and taking in the landscape of the three-year-old nation
than in practicing medicine. His healing skills may have been primitive by modern
standards, but nothing lacked in his power of observation.
Six years after
his visit, with Texas about to become the 28th state of the Union, Page reconstructed
his travels in a 166-page book he called "Prairiedom: Rambles and Scrambles
in Texas or New Estremadura." In the fashion of the times, he opted not to
use his real name, claiming in the book only that it had been written by "a Suthron."
He
crossed the Sabine from Louisiana into Texas, traveling from San
Augustine to Nacogdoches
to Houston and Galveston.
Back in Houston, he went through San
Felipe to Columbus to Bastrop,
Austin and San
Antonio. He returned to Houston
by way of Goliad
and Texana, now a submerged ghost town in Jackson County.
Riding
from the newly selected capital city back to Houston,
Page found a large party of Lipan Apaches camped near the crude road to Bastrop.
He counted more than 50 buffalo hide wigwams.
Page described the Lipans
as "a friendly tribe that early espoused the cause of Texas, and the only one
permitted by the government after the revolution to remain within the settlements."
The
doctor spent the night at a nearby "house of entertainment," presumably a combination
inn and tavern. The chief and some of his fellow tribesmen joined the party that
evening, boasting of their fighting prowess against their sworn enemies, the Comanches.
"In the morning they decamped quite early, their wigwams being dismantled and
packed by the squaws, upon horses and mules, of which they had plenty, and the
invalids and children mounted upon top," Page wrote.
In a heavy rain,
the Lipans overtook Page and his party on the way to Bastrop. The Lipans put their
tents back up and settled in for the night on the bank of Colorado.
"The
following day," Page continued, "we had an opportunity to witness the crossing
of the whole tribe to the opposite shore-one of the most exciting and novel scenes
we had ever witnessed, and which remains impressed upon our mental vision as one
of the most amusing and eventful we saw in our rambles in the prairie land."
The
previous day's rain had swollen the river, and now the wind had swung around to
the north, indicating a coming drop in temperature as the cold front that had
triggered the precipitation moved through the area.
As Page watched, the
Lipans took down their wigwams and folded the hides to form boats.
"Everything
belong to the tribe," he went on, "was carefully packed within [the hide boats]-war
implements, and provisions, and light cooking utensils, all were there. Their
buffalo meat and venison, their bows and arrows, rifles and muskets, powder and
ball, furs and peltries, pipes and tobacco, paints and beads, bear's oil and whisky,
were all safely stored in these novel canoes which floated like a nautilus upon
the stream."
Indian girls and women, darting "like dolphins through the
water" piloted the hide boats to the opposite bank of the river. "No sooner was
one of these frail barks landed than the Indian girls plunged again into the stream,
and regardless of our presence…swam across for another load."
The girls
and boys also swam each animal in their remuda across the river. "Now and then
a vicious mustang would cast his rider into the water, when he would seize him
directly by the mane or tail and thus be borne again to land, or if he failed
to secure his hold he darted through the water like a flying fish, and stemming
the current as well as he was able, floated downward and land some hundred yards
below."
The river crossing, something now accomplished by cars and trucks
in a matter of seconds, took most of the day for the Indians. |
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